The eclipse ends when the sun sets in the Bay of Bengal off India at about 8:30 a.m. EDT, by which time an estimated two billion people will have cautiously gazed skywards.
Many Indians believe that eclipses are the work of Rahu and Ketu, two overwhelming celestial figures of Hindu mythology, who between them swallow the sun.
Only passengers paying 1,500 pounds ($2,400) for a ticket on the Concorde supersonic airliner were lucky enough to join the chase as day turned into night.
The last eclipse before the millennium first reaches land at Britain's Scilly Isles and then within a minute sweeps ashore on the England mainland at Cornwall.
The 2,000 population of the Isles of Scilly has been quadrupled by an influx of eclipse watchers.
A British Royal Air Force Hercules aircraft flying above the clouds over Cornwall was beaming back live pictures.
Inmates at Exeter prison in western England were bitterly disappointed on E-day -- they were confined to their cells and their morning exercise period switched to the afternoon for security reasons.
The governor did not want guards left in the dark with the prisoners out in the exercise yard.
In Berlin, a 24-year-old German was the first victim of the eclipse when he was taken to hospital with severe burns after he climbed a power pylon to get a good view and then touched the 20,000-volt electricity cable.
France and Germany were next in line after Britain. Then comes Hungary. The Romanian capital of Bucharest is the only European capital directly in its path.
The point of greatest eclipse -- as the moon's axis passes closest to earth -- is set to fall on the Romanian town of Rimnicu Vilcea for two minutes and 27 seconds.
Nature is turned upside down for the rare celestial event. Temperatures drop by as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Birds stop singing, dogs howl and badgers come out of lairs.
U.S. and British warplanes were patrolling the skies of northern Iraq as normal Wednesday, despite a solar eclipse watched by astronomers on mountain campsites in the area, said a spokesman for the allied force.
Iraq said the Western jets attacked a fourth-century Christian monastery in northern Iraq Tuesday, killing and wounding a number of people at a camp set up for the astronomers to watch the eclipse.
Iraqi authorities had asked the United Nations to request the Western allies to put the flights, dubbed Operation Northern Watch, on hold for a day so that Iraqis and scientists from Egypt, Libya and Syria
could watch the eclipse in safety.
Pope John Paul, a keen astral watcher, will have a bird's eye view of the eclipse as he flies by helicopter from the Vatican to his summer residence south of Rome.
Palestinians in self-ruled Gaza mostly heeded health ministry advice to stay home and avoid the eclipse's dangers.
It will be the last total eclipse seen in Western Europe until 2081.
The further it goes across the globe, the better are the chances of clear skies for eager eclipse watchers gazing at the heavens -- despite all the warnings of blindness from health experts.
In the Iranian city of Isfahan, where many astronomers have gathered, the chances of a perfect view rise to 96 percent.
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